I solved online, which had no hints; I'm told that the printed version says nothing either. Will told me to watch the show tonight, but said nothing else. I only stumbled across the in-grid message because there was something similar in another puzzle recently. But I had no clue about the second message until reading this. In retrospect, many of the clues are wonky, and that should have been a hint that something more was up (I'm sure there's a better way to clue ABBA!).
I didn't know about the outside-the-grid message until now. I don't know if it's really that constrained, though the result is the wonkiness Nick mentioned.
Well, not constrained in that it has to be that message, but that is has to be a message. I haven't tried building too many crosswords so maybe I shouldn't speak about the difficulty of doing that.
(Spoiler alert for anyone reading who hasn't found the outside-the-grid message)
I find that in improv and in puzzles, two constraints is usually accomplishable, whereas more than two becomes a serious issue. In this case, for each clue you need a particular starting letter, and you have a fixed answer. Some of the clues are going to seriously want a particular starting letter ("FOO" certainly wants an E, or possibly a C) but you can build the hidden message around those fixed points and then tweak the other clues to fill in the blanks.
For example, if I wanted to clue VCR (first one I saw when I glanced back at the grid) I could go with:
Accessory for a TV Beta player Common TV accessory DVD player's ancestor Eject button site Four-headed object, perhaps
...and so forth. Of course, the clues Merl used read more smoothly in general than mine, but I did mine off the top of my head, and Merl is Merl.
I expected there might be some trickery so my mind was in Mystery Hunt mode and some things stuck out (like DUMB in the upper-left block once I got that filled in quickly which was later confirmed by SORRY in the middle).
I think even with those two messages, the grid doesn't need to be constructed as is and while DOH and BART are nice for flavor, there could be more that will be revealed tonight.
I solved online, which had no hints; I'm told that the printed version says nothing either. Will told me to watch the show tonight, but said nothing else. I only stumbled across the in-grid message because there was something similar in another puzzle recently. But I had no clue about the second message until reading this. In retrospect, many of the clues are wonky, and that should have been a hint that something more was up (I'm sure there's a better way to clue ABBA!).
BTW,
SunNYT - 1h35m clean!
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I find that in improv and in puzzles, two constraints is usually accomplishable, whereas more than two becomes a serious issue. In this case, for each clue you need a particular starting letter, and you have a fixed answer. Some of the clues are going to seriously want a particular starting letter ("FOO" certainly wants an E, or possibly a C) but you can build the hidden message around those fixed points and then tweak the other clues to fill in the blanks.
For example, if I wanted to clue VCR (first one I saw when I glanced back at the grid) I could go with:
Accessory for a TV
Beta player
Common TV accessory
DVD player's ancestor
Eject button site
Four-headed object, perhaps
...and so forth. Of course, the clues Merl used read more smoothly in general than mine, but I did mine off the top of my head, and Merl is Merl.
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I expected there might be some trickery so my mind was in Mystery Hunt mode and some things stuck out (like DUMB in the upper-left block once I got that filled in quickly which was later confirmed by SORRY in the middle).
I think even with those two messages, the grid doesn't need to be constructed as is and while DOH and BART are nice for flavor, there could be more that will be revealed tonight.
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